Escadaria Selaron, Rio’s tiled staircase between Lapa and Santa Teresa

Escadaria Selaron in Rio de Janeiro turns an ordinary concrete stairway into a continuous artwork of ceramic tiles that climbs between the districts of Lapa and Santa Teresa. Created and reshaped by the Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón from 1990 until his death in 2013, the staircase has become a landmark of Brazil’s urban landscape.

A hillside staircase turned into a single artwork

Escadaria Selaron occupies a public stairway on Rua Manuel Carneiro in central Rio de Janeiro, rising from the lower streets of Lapa towards the hill of Santa Teresa above.The stairway runs between Joaquim Silva Street and Pinto Martins Street and forms a steep urban corridor framed by houses and retaining walls.The steps link the Lapa and Santa Teresa neighbourhoods and are easy to recognise from a distance by their bands of bright colour.

The structure itself is a substantial stairway of around 125 m (410 ft), built as a series of steps and small landings that lift the street line up the hillside.There are 215 steps in total, and almost every visible surface is faced with tiles or fragments of ceramic. The risers form a continuous mosaic, while the side walls and parapets carry denser panels that rise alongside the stair, so that climbing the route feels like walking through an elongated gallery of glazed surfaces.

Tiles from Brazil and far beyond

The core visual impression of Escadaria Selaron is the dense field of tiles in the colours associated with the Brazilian flag: yellows, greens and blues repeating in bands, diagonals and blocks along the stair. Many of the tiles are standard industrial pieces sourced from Brazil, but they sit beside decorative ceramics with floral patterns, geometric designs, cityscapes and coats of arms.More than 2,000 tiles have been used in total, drawn from over 60 countries, turning the staircase into a compact atlas in glazed clay.

Interspersed among the factory tiles are panels painted or assembled by Jorge Selarón himself, including repeated images of a pregnant woman and stylised faces that appear as recurring motifs across the stair.Some of the approximately 2,000 tiles were hand-painted by the artist, and visitors who pay close attention will find small scenes tucked into the larger pattern, from national flags to humorous cartoons. The surfaces are not uniform; tiles with different glazes and levels of wear sit side by side, giving the stair a patchwork character that reflects the long period over which the work was assembled.

Jorge Selarón’s long-running transformation

Jorge Selarón was born in 1947 in Chile and worked as a painter and ceramist before settling in Rio de Janeiro in the 1980s.He began decorating the existing stairway in 1990, initially outside his own residence on the route. What started as a modest intervention grew over more than two decades into a project that covered the entire run of steps between Lapa and Santa Teresa, with the artist continually adding, replacing and rearranging tiles as new material arrived.The mosaics were worked on for around twenty years until 2013, giving the staircase its layered, evolving appearance.

The timeline of the work means that Escadaria Selaron is closely tied to Selarón’s life in Rio and to his relationships with visitors who sent him tiles from their own countries.Accounts of the project describe friends and travellers contributing porcelain pieces that the artist then embedded into the steps, extending the range of motifs far beyond Brazil. The staircase, formally a stretch of Rua Manuel Carneiro, therefore reads as both a personal artwork and a collaborative surface, its ceramics carrying traces of distant places while remaining anchored in a very specific corner of Rio de Janeiro.

Visiting Escadaria Selaron: what travellers from Western Europe should know

• Escadaria Selaron lies between the Lapa district and the hilltop neighbourhood of Santa Teresa in central Rio de Janeiro, using Rua Manuel Carneiro as its axis and connecting streets such as Rua Joaquim Silva to Pinto Martins Street.
• The staircase climbs a noticeable gradient with a long run of steps and short landings, so any visit involves sustained walking up or down concrete treads surfaced with tile.
• The surrounding area includes busy streets, older residential buildings and small bars and cafés, and the staircase can be approached either from the Lapa side at the lower end or from Santa Teresa above.
• Portuguese is the official language in Brazil and the currency is the Brazilian real.
• Entry requirements depend on your nationality; UK travellers can check the FCDO travel advice at gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice, Irish travellers the Department of Foreign Affairs at ireland.ie.

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Frequently asked questions about Escadaria Selaron

Where is Escadaria Selaron in Rio de Janeiro?

Escadaria Selaron is a public staircase on Rua Manuel Carneiro in central Rio de Janeiro, linking the Lapa district at the bottom to the Santa Teresa neighbourhood on the hill above.

What can visitors expect when climbing the staircase?

Visitors walk a long flight of concrete steps surfaced with ceramic tiles, passing dense mosaics on the risers and side walls that combine Brazilian colours with motifs from many countries.

What makes Escadaria Selaron distinctive among city stairways?

The staircase is distinctive because Jorge Selarón transformed an existing urban stairway into a continuous mosaic artwork between 1990 and 2013, using thousands of tiles collected from Brazil and abroad.